My grandma was a church organist for 40 years, and she got me into jazz music and great songwriters, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, all those folks. I can’t do it, but I have a profound respect for it.
When I first was trying to play the clubs around Houston to start playing my own songs, songwriters like Eric Taylor and Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt and Don Sanders were just really encouraging to me and would let me sit in with them during their sets and introduce me to the person that owned and booked the club.
I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.
I remember one day going in the studio to sing and then going to work with three separate songwriters before I came back in the studio. I was running on empty.
A lot of songwriters have written about soldiers and war, but very few have written with them.
I just love Dolly so much, and Loretta. They both are songwriters that knew what they wanted to say; they were bucking a system.
I’ve just always been around great songwriters. To me, they were the standard.
I’m probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.
Protest is patriotic. Since the beginning of musical time, American singers and songwriters have used their talent and bully pulpits to show us America’s strengths and shortcomings.
Anything can become a big tune in Scandinavia because people decide what they want to listen to. So I think that’s very motivating because songwriters can really think outside the box. A great song – whether or not it’s radio-friendly – can really blow up here.
I’ve grown up on American songwriters my whole life – listening to Paul Simon and Bob Dylan and people like John Prine – you know, classic, real songwriters. They’ve been the lion’s share of what I’ve really focused on as a writer and as influences, too.
I had no idea when I moved to Nashville people just were songwriters. I had no idea. So I guess I was selling myself as a singer when I first moved here. But then right after I first moved, I started writing a lot.
There are certain topics songwriters stay away from because it’s hard to go there. I didn’t sit down and go, ‘I want to write something about my dad now.’
I know I can cut it with any songwriters in the world.
Queen had incredible songwriters.
I fell in love with Nashville and wrote with some of the best songwriters here.
With songwriters like me who are prolific, you just write the song and then put it on tape.
I would love to play with Rufus Wainwright. He’s one of my favorite songwriters.
A list songwriters and producers are reluctant to give Kesha their songs because of her weight.
Townes Van Zandt ranks alongside Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan. He inspired so many songwriters to shoot for something that’s timeless.
When you research prolific songwriters, it is usually later in their career they write songs that they distance themselves from, or it’s about other people.
Younger songwriters will ask me, ‘What did you do?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, I worked a day job, and I didn’t stake anything. I didn’t quit my day job. I didn’t have any hopes at all. I just did the thing that I believed in, and I waited a long time.’
Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.
Why can’t we actually sing and get respected as good singers and songwriters without having our boobs and butt hanging out?
When After Forever stopped, I didn’t want to first find a band, then see if I could write with them, figure that whole thing out, then record an album. Instead, I worked with people I knew would be good songwriters out of an idea how I thought it would sound like.
